re: "Why call it 'Pakistan'?"

The Anti-Jihadist at Jihad Watch ("dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts") had some tough words for Pakistan (and Sudan).

Money quote(s):

"South Sudan's hopeful creation as a new nation is a glorious moment, as well as a sobering one. We should remember as to why South Sudan's existence became necessary in the first place. We must remind the world over and over that the birth of South Sudan as a independent state was long required precisely because Muslims cannot long live amicably with followers of other belief systems."

Sudan is (or was) an amalgamation of, roughly, four (now three) historical kingdoms, sultanates, or whathaveyou and could probably use a little more devolution, leaving even less of its territory (and people) in the hands of "President" Bashir.

"South Sudan's secession from Sudan is in many way a mirror image of another 'secession' that took place over 60 years ago. In the waning days of the British Empire, British India was to be divided into two countries, a Muslim one and a Hindu one, and India was to be cleaved forever into those two parts."

A distorted mirror image, but a mirror image to be sure. The historical differences (and parallels) would suffice for a master's thesis (if not a doctoral dissertation).

"While the larger Hindu India has found a modicum of political stability, has enjoyed decades of economic success, and exports its vibrant culture via its booming film industry worldwide, its Muslim counterpart Pakistan flirts with failed-nation status.

Pakistan is in fact a nightmare of state-sponsored jihadist terrorism inside and outside of its borders. Except for a tiny elite, the country only offers unimaginable squalor and poverty for its people. It has featured a string of unbelievably incompetent and corrupt governments that have exported Islamic terrorism to distant continents, as far as the UK and the USA. Pakistan harbors the world's top terrorists who are allowed to live inside its borders with impunity, free to continue conspiring and plotting mass murder. Pakistan has launched three wars of aggression in its blood-soaked history, all against India, all of which Pakistan lost. Pakistan builds nuclear weapons and nuclear-capable missiles, which it sells the technology for to any and all comers, no questions asked. Pakistan sucks up gifts such as weapons and supplies, intelligence data from the US, and especially financial aid packages from the rest of the world, and either squirrels the money away into various numbered accounts, or passes along as loot to jihad terrorists and other enemies of the Free World. Barbarous shariah laws viciously run riot and leave an ever-growing pile of broken and dead bodies in its wake. Pakistan's police and military murder journalists who question how and why such a horrid state of affairs has come to pass. And on and on."

Pretty damning stuff, to be sure.

"(M)ay I humbly suggest that Pakistan no longer be referred to as "Pakistan", the so-called 'Land of the Pure". Merely mentioning the name is, in a way, tacitly accepting its existence, which right-thinking people everywhere should instantly reject. So, from this point onwards, let us call that place by a more culturally and historically correct name: "Muslim-occupied India". For India was a Hindu land for thousands of years before the invading barbarians of Islam appeared to seize Hindu lands and slaughter its inhabitants, which laid the groundwork for the eventual Muslim calamitous maladministration of that same land."

(7/9)

re: "Mark Steyn on MJ's entourage, CNN's airport audience, & Afghanistan's tribes, & Obama getting Honduras wrong."

Mark Steyn had a great couple of quotes on Hugh Hewitt's show last month:

Regarding the media:

"(G)iven that the problems the media have at the moment with their sinking audiences, you can understand why, you know, CNN is dying. If it weren’t for airports, if it weren’t for the fact that America’s lousy airline industry somehow thinks it will put you in a better mood if your three hour delay at the gate is accompanied by three hours of Wolf Blitzer, there would be no audience for CNN. And I think that’s essentially, they seized on this thing as a drowning man clutches a straw. And the straw in this case I think is toxic."

The straw.... is toxic.

Beautiful.

Also, regarding Afghanistan:

"The British concluded that they did not want Afghanistan formally within the British Empire simply because they did not have the will to do what would be necessary to make it a civilized part of the world as they understood it. And so they contented themselves with a more or less friendly regime in Kabul, and essentially tribal regions carrying on pretty much as they always had done. And in a sense, that system worked until the overthrow of the Afghan monarchy in the 1970s. Afghanistan didn’t progress, but in a way, it was manageable. It was kind of super-decentralized. The King’s write didn’t really run thirty miles from the palace. And tribal, local tribal chiefs more or less got on with life as they always had done. And I’m not sure anyone has yet come up with a working model for Afghanistan that is any better than that. And trying to impose order on the Helmand Valley in particular, I think is something that as I said, the British felt that even, who had as much imperialist swagger as anybody, felt that that was even beyond them. And I’m not sure the United States, with its general preference for a light footprint, is likely to be any more successful there."

Read to the very end to catch the bit about Honduras.

JO - Better times ahead for police force

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Better times ahead for police force

KEN CHAPLIN

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Commissioner of Police Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin loved his distinguished beard. He cultivated it for 30 years while in the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard. However, the day he got his uniform as commissioner, he shaved off his beard because it is a long-standing policy of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) that policemen should not sport a beard. He got much admiration from members of the force and civilians for falling in line in spite of the fact that he heads the force. This goes to show how simple things can create a favourable impact.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"It is not new for officers of the JDF to be appointed to the JCF to beef up the organisation. There was RT "Rocky" Michelin, commissioner from 1953-58, a firm officer."

&

"Those were the colonial days when the sun had just begun to set on the British Empire. Then there were Gordon Langdon, a fine commissioner whom no government could push around; Flight Lieutenant Vin Bunting, deputy commissioner who served in the Royal Air Force, an officer with an incisive mind; Neville Ernandez, assistant commissioner, who granted no favours; SO "Soapy" Day, senior superintendent, a jolly officer; fearless Owen Stephenson, a rough assistant commissioner who had a reputation for going anywhere at any time, and Commissioner Colonel Trevor MacMillan, who brooked no political interference, and who is now minister of national security."

JO - Empire and enigmas

From my archive of press clippings:

Jamaica Observer

Empire and enigmas

HEART TO HEART

With Betty Ann Blaine

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Dear Reader,

The story of Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular, has a recurrent theme. It is a story of old wounds and present realities - a story of empire and enigmas. It is as much a story of the evils of the British Empire as it is a story of a modern-day despot. Zimbabwe's current crisis cannot be fully understood without an examination of the past. Like all of colonised Africa, many of the country's problems have their roots in slavery and colonialism, and the attendant socio-economic and political dynamics of ethnicity and inequality.

Read the whole article here.

Snippet(s):

"The carving up of Africa, commonly referred to as the "partition" or the "scramble", was much more than the sharing up of the continent among European powers for profit and for power. The indiscriminate butchering of the land cut into and across age-old cultural and linguistic boundaries in a manner that left with it deep and long-lasting consequences on almost every country in Africa, including Zimbabwe.

On November 15, 1884, an international conference was convened in Berlin. Present was every nation of Europe, save Switzerland and the United States of America, 14 in all."

Personally, I object to America being classified as a European nation, either today or in 1884.